Food products of the above identified type typically have a length of 0.5 to 4 meters, such as 1.2 to 1.6 meters, and a diameter or cross section from 5 cm to 20 cm, such as 8 to 12 cm, and are prepared by different well known methods. Normally, the mentioned sausage shaped, or cylindrical food products are prepared in a mould and/or inside a sausage skin made of a permeable or impermeable material depending on the specific need, and is treated to give the required flavour, consistency, humidity etc. as required for the finished product.
Before entering the sliding process, the skin is stripped of the food, either manually or by means of well known machines, cutting the skin along the food product, the skin is gripped and is stripped off.
The stripped of food product are then introduced into the cutting equipment, either individually, or most common, two or more of the elongated food products are lifted onto an alignment table and aligned manually. Products that are damaged in a way that is not consistent with requirements for the sliced products, or from which remains of skin is left at the surface thereof, is manually sorted out and taken care of for alternative handling.
The aligning and sorting out of products not fulfilling the requirements for introduction into the slicing part of the process, is a labour intensive process, including a lot of lifting of heavy products.
A sausage packing machine is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,057,055. Sausages are introduced individually into a conveyor and aligned in a side by side transverse alignment relationship. A transfer device is provided to transfer a predetermined number of transversely aligned sausages for packaging.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,979,878 , EP0027876 and EP0174596 relate to alternative solutions for alignment of containers, packages of goods, or the like for packing into packages comprising two or more of the containers, packages or the like.
An object of the present invention is to improve the sorting and alignment part of the process from finished elongated food products, such as cured meat sausages, etc., as mentioned above, to sliced products prepared for sale, and make this process step less labour intensive.
An object of the present invention is to provide an automated device for alignment and sorting of elongated food products overcoming the problems mentioned above. Additional objects will be apparent for the skilled person reading the present description.